Burak Bekdil
ARTICLES BY: Burak Bekdil
Erdoğan’s Costly ‘Make Turkey Great Again’ Program
JNS.org - Turkey’s per capita income is barely $8,900. Its economy is suffering from double-digit inflation and unemployment rates. A quarter of Turkish youth is...
Erdogan and His ‘Arab Brothers’
Neither the Ottoman nor the modern Turkish language has ever been short of racist proverbs denigrating Arabs and their culture. No more, said Recep Tayyip...
Turkey: Radical Islamism’s Corrupted Symbolism
Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took yet another step toward undoing the secular legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, when...
Erdogan’s Pathetic Response to Israel-UAE Peace Deal
These days, Turkey’s foreign policy calculus, especially when it involves matters surrounding Israel, appears to reflect the thinking of a fifth-grade schoolboy. "I don’t like...
Turkey’s Generation Z: A Youth Challenge to Erdogan
Political scientists call them “Generation Z.” They are young Turks born around the turn of the millennium -- technically, those who were born in 1995...
As Turkey Is Flooded With State-Sponsored Fake News, Confusion Abounds on America
In 2018, the Turkish police began to raid onion wholesalers on suspicion that they were artificially raising onion prices and trying to “illegally overthrow” the...
Good News for Freedom: Turkish Youth Don’t Believe in Erdogan
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not lost a single election, including municipal elections and referenda, since his AKP (Justice and Development) party came to...
Turkey and Qatar: Love in Bloom
Few Qataris who fought the Ottoman colonialists to gain their independence in 1915 and end the 44-year-long Turkish rule in the peninsula would ever have...
Turks Turn on Each Other — and the ‘Enemy Within’
For two despicable decades starting at the end of the 1960s, Italy was racked by the Anni di Piombo (Years of Lead). That era was...
Turkey’s Selective Amnesia With the Palestinians
The collective Turkish memory has clear perceptions of which nations are friends and which are foes. In Turkey, the average length of schooling is only...
Don’t Fall for Turkey’s Duplicitous Charm Offensive
In an article published in 2016, “Erdogan: The World’s Most Insulted President,” I suggested that the perpetually angry Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, would...
Turkey Won’t Recover Quickly From the Coronavirus
The coronavirus pandemic has deepened fundamental imbalances in the Turkish economy, making a post-crisis freefall quite likely. However, as far as Turkey’s difficult foreign policy...
Turkish Divisions Thrive Amid Coronavirus
Turks often boast about their strong national unity “in good and bad times.” “Dozens of ethnicities came together to win the War of Independence (1920-22),”...
Turkey and Coronavirus: Conspiracy Theories and Religious Fantasy
Turkey’s fight against coronavirus (COVID-19) is generally accepted to be rational, well-timed, not too badly planned, and fairly effective. At a time when the German case...
Top Officials Discuss Cooperation Against Antisemitism at First-of-Its-Kind Balkans Forum
Three Dead as Woman Beheaded in Knife Attack at French Church
UK Labour Party Suspends Ex-Leader Corbyn After Antisemitism Failings Exposed
SFSU Professor Goes on Antisemitic Rant About a ‘Jewish Caucus’ Being ‘Islamophobic’ for Opposing Terrorist Speech
Palestinian Narrative of Victimization ‘Coming to an End’